Spotlight Old Deleted Emails

[IceCold]

Hey Guys,

First time poster here. Sorry if I'm breaking the rules or if this has already been answered.

Recently I typed in a name into Spotlight on my iPad and it pulled up an email from 2010 that was long deleted from my Gmail account that is attached to the iPad.

My question is, is it possible to retrieve the text of this email? The Spotlight preview shows me 5 lines of the email and I know for sure that the email itself has been deleted from my Gmail inbox (as well as Trash/Deleted Items). When I tap on the Preview of the Email it simply opens up the Mail app and just opens my normal Gmail inbox.

Has this been answered before? Is this a common thing? I have IExplorer and have been searching through hundreds of folders to see if I can retrieve the mail or at least the text from within.

Is this possible? If so how?

Thanks so much!

 

[J. A.]

Hi, IceCold! Welcome to iPF!

Gmail leaves deleted emails in the Trash folder for 30 days. Then they will be removed from there. As you told us, that old email was from 2010, so even if you didn't delete it from Trash yourself, it's gone because of the 30 days rule.

When an email is removed from the account, there's no way to retrieve it. Sorry!

 

[IceCold]

So how come I can see almost all the emails from 2010 from this sender? If they are gone, why do they keep popping up? I know they're not in Gmail anymore, but are they stored in a cache on the iPad somewhere? I can't see these emails on my iPhone or my Mac spotlight, only on the iPad.

 

[J. A.]

So how come I can see almost all the emails from 2010 from this sender? If they are gone, why do they keep popping up? I know they're not in Gmail anymore, but are they stored in a cache on the iPad somewhere? I can't see these emails on my iPhone or my Mac spotlight, only on the iPad.

I can't tell you exactly, why this is happening. It has been reported to be a bug in Spotlight Search for years, and there are also currently (iOS 7) users who are facing this.
As you already noticed, you can't open the emails. Spotlight Search opens the Mail app, where they were located, but it doesn't open the messages themselves. They were deleted, so they are not stored somewhere else on the iPad.

Try to delete the Gmail account on your iPad, reset it, restart it, force close the app with the Gmail account, and set it up again. See if this will remove the message from Spotlight Search.

Reset your iPad:
Press and hold Home and Power button until the Apple logo appears, release both and let your iPad power up. This won't remove any information on your iPad.

Restart: turn it off, wait for a few minutes and turn it on again.

Force close:
iOS 7: double tap the Home button to reveal the multitask bar. Slide the picture above the app icon towards the top of the screen.

 

[IceCold]

This iPad has been reset, synced and backed up a hundred times. It's only these certain emails that appear as Top Hits in Spotlight the second I start typing the first letter of the persons name. Frustrating.

I deleted the Gmail account, the messages dissapeared from Spotlight, I then reset the iPad and Re-Added the Gmail account, and the messages have reappeared. Still all from 2010 and all Top Hits in Spotlight.

 

[J. A.]

Sorry, I didn't know that. Did you also try to erase all content and settings and restore your device?

 

[IceCold]

I was really hoping to retrieve the text from the mail. It must be stored on the iPad itself. I have been using IExplorer and rooting around through all the back folders but to no avail. I'd rather not reset the iPad and eliminate the chances of finding the mails.

 

[J. A.]

When they are removed, they are gone. Nothing will make them reappear. What you experience, is a glitch in Spotlight Search.